‘Well, well.’ The smile broadened into a puckish grin. ‘You got all the oil in the Rocky Mountains, Bruce.’
‘You were going to tell me how you found his body,’ I reminded him.
‘Yeah.’ He sat back, sprinkled salt into one of his glasses of beer and drank it. ‘Queer thing that,’ he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘He was fine and dandy when we got up there. An’ a week later he was dead.’
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘Well, it was this away. I’d bin totin’ a couple of Americans round for the best part of two months. They were climbers and they did stuff for magazines back in the States.’ He produced a little white cotton bag of tobacco and rolled himself a cigarette. ‘Well, we coralled our horses at Campbell’s place and went south over The Gillie. We were away about a week and when we came down into the Kingdom again it was snowing hard. I figured somethin’ was wrong as soon as I heard the horses. Besides, there weren’t no smoke coming from any of the chimneys and no tracks in the snow outside either. The whole place had a dead look. The old man was lying face down on the floor just inside the door, like as though he was struggling to get outside and bring in some logs. Judging by the state of the stable I guess he’d been dead about three days.’
‘What do you think caused his death?’ I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Old age, I guess. Or maybe he had a stroke and died of cold. I hope when it comes to my turn I’ll go like that. No fuss, no illness—and no regrets. Right to the end he believed there was oil up there.’
He relit the stub of his cigarette and leaned back, his eyes half-closed. ‘Ever hear him playin’ the pipes, Bruce?’
I shook my head. ‘I only met him once. That was in England, and he’d just come out of prison.’
His sandy eyebrows lifted slightly. ‘So the prison stuff was true, eh? That was the only story I ever heard him tell more than once—that and about the oil. Mebbe they’re both true and you’re the richest man this side of the 49th parallel.’ He laughed. ‘There’s oil in the Rocky Mountains. Be a joke, Jeff, if it were true, wouldn’t it now?’ He leaned across to me. ‘That’s how the nights always ended up—the old man poundin’ the table with his fist and glaring at his visitors through the mat of his white hair and roaring There’s oil in the Rocky Mountains fit to bust.’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘But he could play the pipes.’
He leaned back again and rubbed his hand over his eyes. ‘I mind one evening some years ago; it was very still and he came out of the ranch-house as the sun was setting and began to march up and down playing his pipes. The sound was clear and thin and yet it came back from the mountains as though all the Highlanders who ever lived were assembled there on the peaks and all of them a’blowin’ to beat hell out of their pipes. And when he played The Campbells are Coming a million Campbells seemed to answer him. I guess it was about the weirdest thing I ever heard.’ He leaned forward and picked up his glass. ‘Your health!’
I raised my glass, thinking of the picture he was giving me of my grandfather and the Kingdom. ‘How do I get there?’ I asked.
‘Up to the Kingdom?’ Johnnie shook his head. ‘You won’t get up there yet awhiles—not until the snow melts.’
‘When will that be?’
‘Oh, in about a month, I guess.’
‘I can’t wait that long,’ I said.
Johnnie’s eyes narrowed as he peered across at me. ‘You seem in a goldarned hurry.’
‘I am,’ I said.
‘Well, Max Trevedian might take you up. He acts as packer and guide around Come Lucky. But it’d be a tough trip, an’ he’s an ornery sort of crittur anyway. Me, I wouldn’t look at it, not till the snows melt. But then I ain’t much use without a pony. Had the devil’s own job getting down last fall.’
I brought the dog-eared map out of my pocket and spread it on the table. ‘Well, how do I get to Come Lucky anyway?’ I asked.
Johnnie peered at it and shook his head. ‘Maps ain’t much in my line,’ he said. ‘I go by the look of the country.’
It was Jeff who gave me the information I wanted.
‘You’ll have to take the Continental down as far as Ashcroft. From then on it’s a car ride up through 150-Mile House, Hydraulic, Likely and Keithley Creek. Do you reckon the roads will be open, Johnnie?’
Johnnie Carstairs shrugged his shoulders. ‘Depends on the chinook. If it’s blowing then you might find somebody to take you through.’
I thanked him and folded the map up.
He looked across at me and his hand closed over my arm. ‘You’re a sick man, Bruce. Take my advice. Wait a month. It’s too early for travelling through the mountains except by rail. Don’t you agree, Johnnie?’
‘Sure, sure. Leastaways I wouldn’t try it.’
‘I can’t wait that long,’ I murmured.
‘Be sensible,’ Jeff pleaded. ‘Johnnie and I have lived up in this country a long time.’
‘I must get up there,’ I insisted.
‘Well then, wait a month.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why in hell not?’
‘Because—’ I stopped then. I couldn’t just tell them I hadn’t much time.
‘Let him find out for himself, Jeff.’ Johnnie’s voice was gruff with anger. ‘Some people are just cussed. They got to learn the hard way.’
‘It’s not that,’ I said quickly.
‘All right, then—what is it? What’s the goldarned hurry?’
‘It isn’t any of your business.’ I hesitated and then added, ‘I’ve only two months to live.’
They stared at me. Johnnie’s eyes searched my face and then dropped awkwardly. He brought out his tobacco and concentrated on rolling a cigarette. ‘I’m sorry, Bruce,’ he said gently. Accustomed to dealing with animals I think he’d read the truth of Maclean-Hervey’s opinion in my features. But Jeff was a mechanic. ‘How do you know?’ he asked. ‘You can’t know a thing like that.’
‘You can if you’ve got cancer of the stomach.’ My voice sounded harsh. ‘I had the best man in London. He gave me six months at the outside. The anaemia is secondary,’ I added. I got to my feet. My lips were trembling uncontrollably. ‘Good-night,’ I said. ‘And thanks for your help.’ I didn’t want them to see that I was scared.
3
I LAY AWAKE for hours that night, fighting for breath and looking out at the frozen moonlight glinting on the white needle of Edith Cavell. I can admit it now—I was scared. The idea that I could do in a few months what my grandfather had failed to do in thirty odd years had carried me over the first hurdle of shock and across 5,000 miles of the earth’s surface. Now that that idea was finally shattered the ground seemed to have been cut away from under my feet. But the more sick at heart I felt the more determined I became to reach Campbell’s Kingdom. Like a dog I wanted to crawl into some safe retreat to die, away from the prying eyes of my fellow creatures.
Next day Jeff Hart and Johnnie Carstairs both came down after lunch to see me off. They didn’t ask me how I was and they studiously avoided looking at me. They insisted on carrying my two handgrips and walked one on either side of me as though they were afraid I’d die on them right there. ‘Damn it,’ Jeff growled, ‘if it had been a month later I’d have driven you over myself.’ A cold wind flung puffs of powdered snow in our faces.
They saw me into my carriage and left cigarettes and magazines the way visitors leave flowers in a sick room. As the train pulled out Johnnie called to me: ‘Any time you need help, Bruce, there’s a couple of pals right here in Jasper you might call on.’
‘We’ll be up to see you some time,’ Jeff added.
I waved acknowledgment and as I watched the black outline of the station fade in the wind-driven snow I felt a lump in my throat. The sense of loneliness had closed in on me again and I went back to my seat.
The train puffed laboriously into a world of virgin white. Our only contact with the outside world was the twin black threads of the line
reaching back towards the prairies. The mountains closed in around us, monstrous white shapes scarred here and there by black outcrops of wind-torn rock.
The train threaded its way inexorably southwards, through Thunder River, Redsand, Blue River and Angushorn. At Cottonwood Flats it began to rain and as dusk fell we drew in to Birch Island and I saw for the first time a stretch of road clear of snow.
We reached Ashcroft just before midnight. It was still raining. The darkness was full of the sound of water and great heaps of dirty snow filled the yard with gurgling rivulets. When I asked at the hotel about the roads they told me they had been open for the last two days. I felt my luck was in then and that nothing could stop me. Next morning I bought a pair of good water-proof boots and tramped the round of the local garages. My luck held. At one of them I found a mud-bespattered Ford filling up with gas, a logger bound for Prince George. He gave me a ride as far as 150-Mile House. The country poured water from its every crevice, the creeks were roaring torrents and we ground our way through falls of rock and minor avalanches. It took us most of the day to do the hundred odd miles to 150-Mile House.
I spent the night there and in the morning got a lift as far as Hydraulic. By then the rain had turned to a wet snow. I was getting back into the high mountains. After a wait of two or three hours and some lunch, a farm truck took me on to Keithley Creek. It was dark when I arrived. The country was deep in snow and it was freezing hard. I crawled into bed feeling dead to the world and for the first time in months slept like a log.
I slept right through to eleven o’clock and was woken with the news that the packer was in from Come Lucky and would be leaving after lunch. It was blowing half a gale and snowing hard. They served me a steak and two fried eggs and when I’d packed and paid my bill I was taken out and introduced to a great ox of a man who was loading groceries into an ex-army fifteen hundredweight.
We pulled out of Keithley just after two, the rattle of the chains deadened by the soft snow. Visibility was very poor, the snow driving up behind us and flying past the windows as we ground slowly along the uneven track. I glanced at my companion. He was wrapped in a huge bearskin coat and he had a fur cap with ear flaps and big skin gloves. His face was the colour of mahogany. He had thick, loose lips and he kept licking at a trickle of saliva that ran out of the corners of his mouth. His nose was broad and flat and his little eyes peered into the murk from below a wide forehead that receded quickly to the protection of his Russian-looking cap. His huge hands gripped the steering wheel as though he had to fight the truck every yard of the way. ‘Do you live at Come Lucky?’ I asked him.
He grunted without shifting his eyes from the track.
‘I suppose there’s a hotel there?’
A nod accompanied the grunt this time. I let it go at that and relaxed drowsily in the engine-heated noise of the cab.
For a long time we ran through a world of virgin white, between heaped-up banks of snow where the road had been cleared of drifts, only the occasional black line of a stream to relieve the monotony. Then we were climbing and gradually the timber closed in around us. The snow no longer drove past the cab windows. The trees were still and black. I wondered vaguely why the trail to Come Lucky had been cleared of snow, but I was too drowsy to question the driver. It was open and that was all I cared about. I was on the last stage of my journey.
I tried to imagine what it had been like up here less than a hundred years ago when the Cariboo gold rush had been on and these creek beds had been crowded with men from all parts of the world. But it didn’t seem possible. It was just a wilderness of snow and mountain and timber.
After half an hour the snow eased off. We were climbing steadily beside the black waters of the Little River. Timbered mountain slopes rose steeply above me and I got a momentary glimpse of a shaggy head of rock high above us and half veiled in cloud. I glanced at my companion and suddenly it occurred to me that this might be the packer that Johnnie Carstairs had talked about. ‘Is your name Max Trevedian?’ I asked him.
He turned his head slowly and looked at me. ‘Ja, that is my name.’ He seemed to consider for a moment how I knew it and then he turned his attention back to the track.
So this was the man who could take me up to Campbell’s Kingdom before the snows melted. ‘Do you know Campbell’s Kingdom?’ I asked him.
‘Campbell’s Kingdom!’ His voice had a sudden violence of interest. ‘Why do you ask about Campbell’s Kingdom?’
‘I want to go up there.’
‘Why?’
For some reason I didn’t wish to tell him why. I stared out of my side window. We were running along the shores of a small lake now. It was all frozen over and the flat surface of the ice was covered with a dusting of snow.
‘Why do you wish to go there?’ he asked again.
‘I’ve heard about it, that’s all,’ I replied vaguely, wondering why the mention of Campbell’s Kingdom should so suddenly rouse him from his taciturn silence.
‘Why do you go to Come Lucky, huh? It is too soon for visitors. Are you an oil man?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Then why do you come?’
‘That’s my business,’ I answered, annoyed by his childlike persistence.
He grunted.
‘What made you ask if I was an oil man?’
‘Oil men come here last year. There is an old devil lived up in the mountains who thought there was oil there.’ He suddenly began to laugh, a great, deep-throated sound. ‘Damned old fool! All they found were rocks. I could have told them there was no oil.’
‘How did you know?’
‘How did I know?’ He stared at me angrily.
‘What made you so certain?’
‘Because he is a swindler,’ he growled. ‘A dirty, lying, bastard old man who swindle everyone.’ His voice had risen suddenly to a high pitch and his little eyes glared at me hotly. ‘You ask my brother.’
His words swept me back to my childhood, to the taunts and jeers I had suffered. ‘You’re referring to Campbell, are you?’
‘Ar. Campbell.’ There was an incredible vibrance of hatred in the way he spoke the name. ‘King Campbell! Is that why you come here—to see Campbell?’ He laughed. ‘Because if you have, you will waste your time. He is dead.’
‘I know that.’
‘Then why do you come, huh?’
I was beginning to understand what Johnnie Carstairs had meant when he had said the man was an ornery crittur. I didn’t answer him and I didn’t ask any more questions. It was like travelling with an animal you’re not quite sure of and we drove on in silence.
As dusk began to fall we came out on to the shores of a narrow lake. Come Lucky was at the head of it. My first sight of the place was as we slid out of the timber on to the lake shore. The town was half-buried in snow, a dark huddle of shacks clinging to the bare, snow-covered slopes of a mountain and leaning out towards the lake as though in the act of being swept into it by an avalanche. Beyond it a narrow gulch cut back into the mountains and lost itself in a grey veil of cloud. The road appeared to continue along the shore of the lake and into the gulch. We turned right, however, up to Come Lucky and stopped at a long, low shack, the log timbers of which had been patched with yellow boards of untreated pine. There was a notice on one of the doors—Trevedian Transport Company: Office. This was as far as the track into Come Lucky had been cleared. A drift of smoke streamered out from an iron chimney. A door slammed and a fat Chinaman waddled out to meet us. He and Max Trevedian disappeared into the back of the truck and began off-loading the stores. I stood around waiting and presently my two grips were dropped into the snow at my feet. The Chinaman poked his head out of the back of the truck. ‘You stay here?’ he asked.
‘Is this the hotel?’
‘No. This is bunkhouse for men working on road up Thunder Creek.’
‘Where’s the hotel?’ I asked.
‘You mean Mr Mac’s place—The Golden Calf?’ He pointed up the snow-blocked street.
‘You find up there on the right side.’
I thanked him and trudged through the snow into the town of Come Lucky. It was a single street bounded on either side by weather-boarded shacks. Dotted amongst them were log cabins of stripped jack pine. The place seemed deserted. There wasn’t a soul about and only in two instances did I see smoke coming from the ugly clutter of tin chimneys. The roofs of many of the shacks had fallen in. Some had their windows ripped out, frames and all. Doors stood rotting on their hinges. The untreated boards were grey with age and soggy with moisture. Scraps of paper clung forlornly to hoardings and the faint lettering above empty shops and saloons proclaimed the purpose for which the crumbling bundle of wood had originally been assembled. The King Harry Bar still carried the weathered portrait of an English King and next door there was a doctor’s brass plate, now a green rectangle of decomposing metal. The wooden sidewalks stood up above the level of the snow, a crazy switch-back affair of haphazard design and doubtful safety. It seemed to be constructed on stilts. In fact the whole place was built on stilts and it leaned down the slope to the lake as though the thrust of the coast wind had pushed it outwards like a flimsy erection of cards. Here and there a shack was held together by pieces of packing cases and rough-cut planks; evidence of human existence. But in the main Come Lucky was a rotten clutter of empty shacks.
It was my first sight of a ghost town.
The Golden Calf was about the biggest building in the place. Faded gilt lettering proclaimed its name and underneath I could just make out the words: If it’s the Gaiety of the City for You, This is the Best Spot in the whole of Cariboo. And there was the picture of a calf, now grey with age. The sidewalk was solid here and roofed over to form a sort of street-side verandah.
The door of the hotel opened straight into an enormous bar room. The bar itself ran all along one side and behind it were empty shelves backed by blotchy mirrors. There were faded pictures of nude and near-nude women and yellowing bills advertising local events of years gone by. The few marble-topped tables and rickety chairs, the iron-framed piano and the drum stove which roared against the opposite wall took up little of the dirt-ingrained floor area. The room was warm, but it had a barrack-room emptiness about it that was only heightened by the marks of its one-time Edwardian elegance.
Campbell's Kingdom Page 5
